{"id":53549,"date":"2025-02-27T15:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T15:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/jailed-kurdish-pkk-separatist-leader-ocalan-issues-call-to-lay-down-arms\/"},"modified":"2025-02-27T15:20:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T15:20:00","slug":"jailed-kurdish-pkk-separatist-leader-ocalan-issues-call-to-lay-down-arms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=53549","title":{"rendered":"Jailed Kurdish PKK separatist leader Ocalan issues call to lay down arms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdish separatist PKK, has called on his movement to lay down its arms and dissolve itself.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">His statement, read out in a letter by MPs from a pro-Kurdish party, was aimed at ending four decades of armed struggle in south-eastern Turkey in which tens of thousands of people have been killed.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">Ocalan, 75, had earlier met the MPs for several hours on Imrali, an island in the Sea of Marmara south-west of Istanbul where he has been imprisoned in solitary confinement since 1999.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">His announcement came months after ultra-nationalist leader Devlet Bahceli, who is part of Turkey&#8217;s government, launched an initiative to bring an end to the conflict.<!-- --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">&#8220;There is no alternative to democracy in the pursuit and realisation of a political system,&#8221; Ocalan&#8217;s letter read. &#8220;Democratic consensus is the fundamental way.&#8221;<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">Appealing to members of the PKK &#8211; the Kurdistan Workers&#8217; Movement &#8211; Ocalan said &#8220;all groups must lay their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself&#8221;.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">He said the movement &#8211; banned as a terrorist group in Turkey, the EU, UK and US &#8211; was formed primarily because &#8220;the channels of democratic politics were closed&#8221;. <!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">However, Devlet Bahceli, backed by positive signals from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other political parties, had created the right environment for the PKK to lay down its arms, he added.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">Bahceli has for years pushed for tough military action against the PKK, but last October he surprised colleagues by shaking hands with MPs from the pro-Kurdish Dem party in parliament and then suggested Ocalan could be given parole if he gave up violence and dissolved his armed group.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">Some 40,000 people have died since the PKK took up arms. There was a surge of violence in southeastern Turkey from 2015-17 when a two-and-a-half year ceasefire broke down.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">More recently, in October the <!-- -->PKK claimed an attack on the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) headquarters near Ankara<!-- --> which left five people dead. <!-- --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c2kggzqy0x7o\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdish separatist PKK, has called on his movement to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1912,1082,1239,1025,5388,5383,1020,5390,5389,3657],"class_list":["post-53549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories","tag-arms","tag-call","tag-issues","tag-jailed","tag-kurdish","tag-lay","tag-leader","tag-ocalan","tag-pkk","tag-separatist"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.0 (Yoast SEO v28.5) - 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